Revolutionaries

"Every ideology and mode of belief can, if true, implement itself by using the resources of technology and above all those of the media without having to resort to violence. In other words, violence has become unnecessary. In fact things have got to the point where violence cannot be afforded. The rich variety of institutions and practices the democratic system offers is built on this social and scientific-technological development, and whatever problem it tackles, it offers a certain solution. It itself is the solution. To go through the examples, the solution to religious wars is secularism. Here the standard and the implementation involve taking the approach that everyone is free to follow their religious beliefs and democratic criteria will apply to all of them. Democracy offers definite freedom of belief and this is the antidote to religious wars. Again the same applies to the fields of thought and ideology. There is freedom of thought and conviction. It is allowed to work as one wants and implement one's beliefs as long as one does not infringe the rights of others in this respect. This also applies to political ideas and their expression in the form of parties. As long as it adheres to the democratic system and its state structure, every party can offer a solution without resorting to violence. There is no question here of either imposing a religion by force or breaking and shattering the structure of the state. Religion, thought and the parties based on them know to meet the standards of the democratic system of the state because they are based on them. If they don't know how to do this, then democracy gets the right to defend itself. It is clear here that regardless of the social group they are based on (which might be a nation or an ethnic or religious group), beliefs, ideas and the parties through which they are expressed cannot, in the name of these beliefs and ideas, force the limits on which the state is based. There is no need for this, because it will render the problem they claim to be solving even worse. Consequently, there is no need for it, and, in any case, there are solutions within the system. These are the democratic rights of those groups. They are their freedoms of belief and thought. They are the parties. They are all types of coalitions. In the area of language and culture, the democratic solution is even more striking. This is the area where the greatest successes have been achieved. Because the intermingling of language and culture, these values that many national groups have assimilated together for centuries, do not want to separate and get weak and monotonous, but prefer to stay together to get enriched and achieve variety, strength and life. And the school and laboratory for this is democracy and its implementation with conviction. Democracy is almost a garden of language and culture. The most developed and powerful principles of our day once again express this clearly. All European countries and North America are clear proofs of it. The attempt to suppress new religious, linguistic, cultural, intellectual and political developments during past centuries was the cause of all major wars, and resistance against suppression gave to wars which could be seen as understandable. Particularly in European countries this experience led to the development of a determined democracy in the wake of all these wars and led to the supremacy of the West. Western civilisation can, in this sense, be termed democratic civilisation. The democratic system is at least as important as scientific and technological superiority. Feeding off each other, they both became strong and achieved the status of world civilisation."

"The right of self-determination of the peoples includes the right to a state of their own. However, the foundation of a state does not increase the freedom of a people. The system of the United Nations that is based on nation-states has remained inefficient. Meanwhile, nation-states have become serious obstacles for any social development. Democratic confederalism is the contrasting paradigm of the oppressed people. Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation. Democratic confederalism is based on grassroots participation. Its decision-making processes lie with the communities. Higher levels only serve the coordination and implementation of the will of the communities that send their delegates to the general assemblies. For limited space of time they are both mouthpiece and executive institution. However, the basic power of decision rests with the local grassroots institutions."

"The best answer you can give to the call of mothers, which I know is very burning, is to carry out a long and successful struggle."

"Legal protection is not only for women, it is valid for everyone. Women should be able to protect themselves. I say rose theory. I thought about the rose. The rose, in order to protect itself, produces satires. There is also a natural defense of a flower and a plant."

"Women's liberation should develop with democratic values, equality and freedom."

"Only a woman who can think strongly can make beautiful and correct decisions."

"The women's revolution requires that the fight against the mentality of mass murder, rape and rapist twenty-four hours a day at work, be strengthened in the moral and political field as well."

"The women's revolution is the flower revolution. -"

"'Women's development is revenge for slavery'"

"One can say that the most radical transformation of society is determined by the transformation that women will offer. The more equal and free women are, the more equal and free all parts of society are."

"After all, the PKK, in all its historical processes, is a movement that has faced international conspiracies. I do not believe that such a conspiracy should be developed at the international level around any movement."

"PKK is a labor movement"

"Heval Mizgin is truly exemplary in terms of knowledge, tactical authority and connection to organizational principles."

"The century of women's freedom is the century of women's freedom"

"Zilan passed me by his action. I will be a militant and a follower of Zilan from now on."

""An action is the action of one person, but without words it is an insult." This is actually the tactic of the PKK, the style of the PKK, and it is the style of action that the PKK should give as a response to the times."

"Let me be clear, other pakrewans are also part of this, but in the action of comrade Zilan, this part has come to the fore."

"I warn the PDK. This kind of voluntary cooperation with the enemy should be stopped. Perhaps the only way and his last chance is to stop these hostile attempts and move towards a patriotic attitude and order."

"It is not possible to take the country without war"

"This war is not only a military war, but also a life war. It renews the society, renews the culture, renews the spirit, renews the brain and politics. Every Kurd knows that this is his/her rebirth."

"The struggle of the Kurdish woman is the struggle of all the women of the world"

"Leader Abdullah Öcalan:"

"You can't really measure the effect of this kind of resistance in whether or not X number of bridges were blown up or a regime fell... The White Rose really has a more symbolic value, but that's a very important value."

"The tolerant and open atmosphere of their childhood had enabled them to see through Hitler's platitudes at the Nuremberg Rally, when the brother and sister were members of Nazi youth organizations. Nearly all their peers were completely won over by the Führer, whereas Hans and Sophie had other, higher expectations of human nature, not shared by their comrades, against which they could measure Hitler."

"Sophie Scholl's inspirational and life-affirming story is not just another story about the past. It is a story of vital importance in the present and about the future. It is a story of bravery, of personal conscience and of freedom of opinion. It is really a story of today, about you and me. We must never forget she was just 21 years old when she was killed by the Nazis, but she possessed a life-affirming personality no dictatorship could ever silence."

"One of the greatest persons of the 20th Century is largely unknown in this country. We are speaking of Sophie Scholl, a German student who was executed by the Nazis in 1943 for her role as a member of The White Rose, a resistance group which bravely stood up to the inhumanity of the totalitarian regime through the writing and covert distribution of leaflets. … In a poll of Germans conducted in 2003, she was named the fourth greatest woman in that nation's history and other polls have chosen her the greatest German woman of the 20th Century. Some 200 schools in Germany are named in honor of Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans, who also was executed on that fateful day."

"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

"It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the 20th Century... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I don't know why."

"Die Sonne scheint noch."

"I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life."

"Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist? Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering into my sheer joy in all that is lovely — the sense of a Creator whom innocent creation worships with its beauty. Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot. And so I must try to throw myself on the side of the victor."

"Stand up for what you believe in even if you are standing alone."

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."

"Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives... What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt."

"I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties. It forgets the great way home that lies before it. Unprepared, given over to childish trivialities, it could be taken by surprise when the great hour comes and find that, for the sake of piffling pleasures, the one great joy has been missed. I am aware of this, but my heart is not. It seems unteachable; it continues its dreaming … always wavering between joy and depression."

"I've been thinking of a story from the Old Testament: Moses stood all day and all night with outstretched arms, praying to God for victory. And whenever he let down his arms, the enemy prevailed over the children of Israel. Are there still people today who never weary of directing all their thinking and all their energy, single-heartedly, to one cause?"

"Just because so many things are in conflict does not mean that we ourselves should be divided. Yet time and time again one hears it said that since we have been put into a conflicting world, we have to adapt to it. Oddly, this completely unchristian idea is most often espoused by so-called Christians, of all people. How can we expect a righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?"

"I'm still so remote from God that I don't even sense his presence when I pray. Sometimes when I utter God's name, in fact, I feel like sinking into a void. It isn't a frightening or dizzying sensation, it's nothing at all — and that's far more terrible. But prayer is the only remedy for it, and however many devils scurry around inside me, I shall cling to the rope God has thrown me in Jesus Christ, even if my numb hands can no longer feel it."

"The only remedy for a barren heart is prayer, however poor and inadequate. As I did that night at Blumberg, I'll keep on repeating it for us both: We must pray, and pray for each other, and if you were here, I'd fold hands with you, because we're poor, weak, sinful children. Oh, Fritz, if I can't write anything else just now, it's only because there's a terrible absurdity about a drowning man who, instead of calling for help, launches into a scientific, philosophical, or theological dissertation while the sinister tentacles of the creatures on the seabed are encircling his arms and legs, and the waves are breaking over him. It's only because I'm filled with fear, that and nothing else, and feel an undivided yearning for him who can relieve me of it."

"Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did."

"I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct."

"On my arrival here, Major Chester informed me that his orders from your Lordship, in consequence, as I presume, of the directions of Government, were that I should be put in irons. I take it for granted those orders were issued in ignorance of the rank I have the honour to hold in the armies of the French Republic... I do protest, in the most precise and strongest manner, against the indignity intended against the honour of the French army in my person; and I claim the rights and privileges of a prisoner of war, agreeably to my rank and situation in an army not less to be respected in all points than any other which exists in Europe. From the situation your Lordship holds under your Government, I must presume you have discretionary power to act according to circumstances, and I cannot for a moment doubt but what I have now explained to your Lordship will induce you to give immediate orders that the honour of the French army be respected in my person; and of course I shall suffer no coercion other than in common with the rest of my brave comrades whom the fortune of war has for the moment deprived of their Liberty."

"We have come here not merely to salute this noble dust and to pay our homage to the noble spirit of Tone. We have come to renew our adhesion to the faith of Tone; to express once more our full acceptance of the gospel of Irish Nationalism which he was the first to formulate in worthy terms. ... [H]e made articulate the dumb voices of the centuries, he gave Ireland a clear and precise and worthy concept of Nationality. But he did more than this: not only did he define Irish Nationalism, but he armed his generation in defence of it. ... To his teaching we owe it that there is such a thing as Irish Nationalism, and to the memory of the deed he nerved his generation to do, to the memory of '98, we owe it that there is any manhood left in Ireland."

"We have come to the holiest place in Ireland; holier to us even than the place where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought us life, but this man died for us. And though many before him and some since have died in testimony of the truth of Ireland's claim to nationhood, Wolfe Tone was the greatest of all that have made that testimony, the greatest of all that have died for Ireland whether in old time or in new. He was the greatest of Irish Nationalists. I believe he was the greatest of Irish men."

"[B]y some writings which are said to be his, he appears to be a man of considerable talent. He was tried by a court martial...where I understand he conducted himself with great firmness. He had prepared a speech, part of which he was permitted to deliver, the rest being conceived inflammatory. By that part which he delivered he discovered a superiority of mind which must give to him a degree of sympathy beyond what is given to ordinary criminals."

"It would be a manifest exaggeration to call him a great man, but he had many of the qualities of mind and character by which, under favourable conditions, greatness has been achieved, and he rises far above the dreary level of commonplace which Irish conspiracy in general presents. The tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric; the petty vanities and jealousies; the weak sentimentalism; the utter incapacity for proportioning means to ends, and for grasping the stern realities of things, which so commonly disfigure the lives and conduct even of the more honest members of his class, were wholly alien to his nature. His judgment of men and things was keen, lucid, and masculine, and he was alike prompt in decision and brave in action... His journals clearly show how time, and experience, and larger scenes of action, had matured and strengthened both his intellect and character. The old levity had passed away. The constant fits of drunkenness that disfigured his early life no longer occur. The spirit of a mere adventurer had become much less apparent. A strong and serious devotion to an unselfish cause, had unquestionably grown up within him, and if he had become very unscrupulous about the means of attaining his end, he at least was prepared to sacrifice to it, not only his life, but also all personal vanity, pretensions, and ambition."

"The trial of the unfortunate Mr Tone came on today... He was dressed as a French officer in a superb and beautiful suit of regimentals and behaved in the most firm and dignified manner. He read his defence which was at once inflammatory and eloquent. He came, he said, to raise three millions of his countrymen to the rank of men! In enterprises of this kind, he continued, success is everything. Washington succeeded! Kosciusko failed! Perfectly aware of the fate that awaited him, he had only one request to make, that as a French officer he might be shot."

"Mr Tone is a low, thin, smart man about twenty-six years old, of an animated intelligent countenance, and seems to possess very good abilities. He appeared to have very little reserve, answered every question asked him readily, yet whenever such questions were asked as at all involved his party in Ireland his answers were distorted by uncommon shrewdness, screening his party and aiming at an appearance of plausible sincerity."

"To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country, these were my objectives. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman, in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, these were my means."

"The Revolution of ’82 (1782) was a revolution which enabled Irishmen to sell at a much higher price their honour, their integrity, and the interests of their country; it was a revolution which while at one stroke it doubled the value of every borough monger in the Kingdom, left three-fourths of our countrymen [Catholics] slaves as it found them, and the Government of Ireland in the base, wicked and contemptible hands who had spent their lives plundering and degrading her … Who of the veteran enemies of the country lost his place, or his pension? Not one. The power remained in the hands of our enemies, again to be exerted for our ruin, with this difference, that, formerly, we had our distresses gratis at the hands of England, but now we pay very dearly to receive the same with aggravations at the hands of Irishmen—yet this we boast of and call a Revolution."